Until a few nights ago, I hadn’t thought about mountain lions much as I walked The Colorado Trail.

I’m always looking for signs left by my forest neighbors — tracks and scat in the trail and around watering places. I’m always listening and looking for what the squirrels and jays are gossiping about, but usually it’s about me. I’ve seen one bear track in 2½ months and heard one bawling out in the woods. I did have a bear in camp one night, although by the time I got out of the sleeping bag, put my headlamp on and unzipped the tent door, that bear was gone.

Lions I’ve not seen or heard. Two hikers I talked to saw mountain lions, and both times it was in the Cochetopa Hills. And both times, the cat was lazily stretched out across the trail and took off the minute it became aware of humans.

One dark and stormy night last week, I was climbing up a ridge through deadfall and thick trees, looking for a place to camp. There hadn’t been a flat space big enough to pitch the tarp for miles, not even a flat-enough spot to stretch out in. If there was nothing down low, I thought, there might be a flat spot up on top, hopefully sheltered by trees.

Although the rotator cuff in my left shoulder was the big concern, my whole left arm was pretty much useless, and my right shoulder had started acting up as well. Getting my pack on and off had become an ordeal involving tree stumps or boulders for props, rolling around on the ground and, of course, cursing. My ribs ached every time I took a deep breath. My left knee was tweaked in the fall, too. I had to stop and rest often, more often than usual, to hunch over my one hiking pole and take light, non-hurtful breaths.

Finally topping out on the ridge, I saw a nice-looking campsite, but you know how it is: Hey, there may be something better around the next bend. So, I sauntered on down the trail. Then I stopped cold.

I had the weirdest sensation that I was being shadowed. My senses were tingling and the hair on the back of my neck was prickling. There was fresh bear scat full of berries in the trail at my feet, but that didn’t bother me at all. Bears are curious, but black bears aren’t stalkers.

No. Not a bear. Something else. That was when my mind screamed, Lion! Nothing attracts the attention of a predator like a weak or injured animal. And it was late evening, dinner time. I did a rapid-fire review of everything I knew about a lion confrontation: I couldn’t raise my arms overhead to make myself appear bigger. I couldn’t easily drop my pack and yank out the umbrella, my strongest defense. My Swiss army knife was buried somewhere inside the pack. Running wouldn’t be an option.

Now, the odds of something happening between man and beast on The Colorado Trail are very low, almost nonexistent. To my knowledge, no one has ever been killed or injured or even greatly hassled by any large critter in the whole history of the trail. Nor has anyone been killed by lightning on the trail, and lightning is a real and major danger.

Moose, for me, are the next-most-worrisome thing: Surprising a moose can be a really unfortunate experience. Bears are around, but bears just want you to go away. I’ll bet lots of bears have seen me. Certainly they’ve smelled me. And that’s got to be scary for them.

But mountain lions have killed people in Colorado and elsewhere. They’re killing machines, and they speak to something deep down and dark in our very core.

I don’t want to be culled from the herd, don’t want to be the first person on The Colorado Trail to go down in that particular record book. I suspect I already hold the longest thru-hiking record. No addendums, please. “Oh, old Ghost. Yeah, he was slow. And he got mauled by a lion, too. Perhaps he should have been faster. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

As quietly as possible, I began walking backward. When I got to a wide spot in the trail, I whipped around and made my way back to that really great and now very appealing camping spot I had seen. I removed my pack as gently as possible while standing fully upright, no wincing or cursing, then opened it, dug out the tarp and set it up one-handed with much louder banging of rocks against the stakes than usual.

See here, lion! Man, rock, metal, tool! Then I crawled inside, zippered it up and went to bed without supper.

I didn’t see a lion, but then, mostly, you never do.

I’m asked often if I get scared walking alone on The Colorado Trail. I have to say, that was the scariest experience I’ve had. And I never saw anything tangible to fear. For the most part, I don’t think about everything that can go wrong on the trail, because lots can go wrong and we can’t do anything about the majority of it. If you think about everything that can go wrong, and what there is to be afraid of, you won’t ever take a step.

I have bumped into a section hiker who was packing a huge handgun in a shoulder holster. “Why?” I asked. “For bears and cats and such,” he said.

Packing a gun on the trail isn’t the answer for me. A gun doesn’t change the fear factor enough to make up for the weight, and when I’m in the woods with a gun, I have an altered attitude. It’s not the mindset I want to be in on the trail. I’m out there as a fellow traveler, a visitor, an observer. I’m out there as a humble pacifist, alert, watchful and respectful.

But I do carry a big umbrella.

Dean Krakel: dkrakel@gmail.com, instagram.com/dkrakel

Editor’s note

Former Denver Post photo editor Dean Krakel plans to trek the entire Colorado Trail — 566 miles from Durango to Denver, including a new route through the Collegiate Peaks. This is the latest in a biweekly series on his hike. See Krakel’s previous posts from the trail at dpo.st/lhhike4.

Award-winning photojournalist Dean Krakel is a freelance journalist who does photography, writing and photo editing assignments. He has worked as a photo editor at the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post, and his work has appeared in National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Cowboys & Indians, High Country News, National Wildlife, Outside, Time, Newsweek and Life magazines. He is based in Conifer, Colo.